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Comments on "Beauty and the Beast"

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It's interesting to see how much the Disney renditions of classic fairytales have infiltrated our perceptions of what fairy tales are, and howthe plots of these fairy tales should unfold. I'll admit that when beginning to read "Beauty and the Beast," I drew on my already establishknowledge of the story and drew comparisons between that version and theclassic tellings. The two versions I found particularly interesting were "The Pig King" as told by Giovanni Straparola and "The Tiger's Bride" astold by Angela Carter.

What struck me about "The Pig King" first was the role the pig's motherplayed in the pig's matrimonial pursuits. Did anyone else find it intriguing that the mother of the girls the pig found infatuating didn'tprotest after the pig murdered her first daughter. The second daughtermet the same fate as the first and it was only the difference in the third daughter's countenance that allowed her to be shown the pigwithout his swine hide. What I can't figure out, and I don't know if Ijust misread, is why the pig chose to be a pig if he knew that he could shed that skin. Why would he choose solely to appear as a man to hiswife and keep it secret from the rest of the world? So while the spellwas cast on him in the womb, the difference between this and the otherversions of the tale is that the beast character is capable of changing between his human and beast forms at will.

The end of "The Tiger's Bride" is what struck me most. Where in moststories, the prince takes the form of a human because someone loves himfor who or what he is on the outside, in "The Tiger's Bride," the narrator ends up as a tigress, and doesn't seem too disturbed by thischange. What actually caught my attention was the way she became atiger. For cats, licking is the process by which they bathe themselves, and sometimes each other. The narrator's transformation is a result ofbeing licked by the tiger, or bathed if you will, cleaning off her humanform such that she can exist in her true form.